Kissing the Beehive (15 page)

"Pauline gave me the books and then she _died_."

"Says he didn't kill her."

"Nope. I never killed anybody. I saw a dead dog once but that's not a _person_."

I gestured toward the door. Frannie got up and we left the room. Out in the hall I asked if he had found anything else at the Petangles house.

"Yeah, a lotta crucifixes and pictures of Dean Martin. Those houses down on Olive Street are like a fuckin' fifties time capsule, you go inside. It's strange he had the books, Sam, but I don't think he's involved. Maybe Pauline

_did_ give them to him for some cockeyed reason."

"Where did you find them?"

"On a bookshelf in his room. He asked me to come in and look at it.

Place was as spick-and-span as a Marine barracks. Showed me all his comics and there they were, right up next to Little Lulu and Yosemite Sam."

"Did you look at them yet?"

"There's nothing there. Just scribbles and blah blah. I'll tell you one thing: It's an odd feeling seeing her handwriting all these years later. I'm going to copy them and give the originals to her mother. I'll give you a set too. You haven't talked to her mom yet, have you?"

"No, but this will give me a good excuse."

Back inside, Johnny was standing far across the room, glaring accusingly at Veronica. "She's not nice! I don't like her."

Frannie and I looked at her.

"He wanted to touch my hair. I said no."

"That's not true! You liar! That's not true!"

I wondered if she _was_ telling the truth. Despite the warm, close afternoon we'd spent together and everything we had talked about, I realized I

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still didn't trust her.

Jitka Ostrova's house was a shrine to her dead daughter. The walls were crammed with framed awards, pictures of the girl at all ages, high school and Swarthmore pennants. Pauline's room, which we were shown almost immediately, was kept exactly as it had been thirty years before. Everything was dusted, all the figurines on the shelves arranged just so. On the wall above the bed was a giant yellowing poster of Gertrude Stein looking like a fire hydrant in a wig.

No shoes tossed left and right, no underwear draped over a chair or flung haphazardly onto the bed. I knew how it should look because I lived with a teenager. Kids and order rarely agree on anything. But no kid lived here, only ghosts and an old woman.

Outside that odd room, the rest of the Ostrova house was a cozy clutter.

You liked being there, liked looking around and seeing this sweet woman's life in every nook and cranny. It was almost grandma's house from a fairy tale but that was impossible: Two of the people she loved most who had lived here were dead. They left an emptiness that was palpable, despite all the gem?tlichkeit.

Mrs. Ostrova was a gem. She was one of those people who had come to the United States early in life but had never really left Europe behind. She spoke with an accent, peppered her sentences with what I assumed were Czech words and phrases ("I took my five plums and left"), and rowed her little boat above a sea of bad fortune and pessimism a thousand feet deep. In everything she said, it was clear she loved her surviving daughter, Magda, but adored the dead Pavlina.

Magda was also there that day. She was a tough, attractive, tightly wound woman who looked to be in her early forties. She had the bad habit of watching you with the eyes of a museum guard who's convinced you're going to steal something. Very protective of her mother, she surprised me by speaking as reverently of Pauline as the old woman did. If there was any residual filial jealousy, I didn't see it.

When we handed over the notebooks, Jitka's face took on the expression of someone touching the Holy Grail. Until then very effervescent and chatty, she went silent for minutes while slowly turning the pages and sounding out some of the words her lost daughter had written so long ago.

When she was finished, she gave us a million-dollar smile and said, "Pavlina. A new part of Pavlina is back in our house. Thank you, Frannie."

She wasn't surprised when she heard where they'd been found. Johnny Petangles had told the truth: Throughout her senior year in high school and whenever she came home from college, Pauline had tried to teach him how to read.

"Poor Johnny! He's so simple in the head but he tried so hard for Pavlina. He loved her too. He don't take those lessons so he can learn to read

-- he wanted to sit next to her all those afternoons!"

Frannie said, "Tell about _The Pirates of Penzance_."

Jitka stuck out her tongue and gave him a raspberry. "Yeah, that's the story you like just so you can laugh at me every time! Frannie, I wish you the black cheek!

"You see, that was _my_ lesson from Pavlina. She was teaching everyone sometimes. You understand, my terrible English always embarrassed her. She'd put her hands over her ears like this and scream, 'Ma, when are you gonna

_learn_?' So she buys this nice record and makes me listen to it. This is _Pirates of Penzance_ and after a while it is my lesson to try to sing along with it to make my English better. You know it?

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_I am the very model of a modern major general;_

_I've information vegetable, animal and mineral;_

She sang it so badly, so offkey and with pronunciations so horrendous that it could have made the whole of England shift on its axis. But she also looked so happy and proud remembering it that we all clapped. To my great surprise, Frannie picked it up where she stopped.

_I know the kings of England and I quote the_

_fights historical,_

_From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical._

"Impressive! Where'd you learn _that_?"

He pointed to Mrs. Ostrova. "Jitka gave me a copy for Christmas a few years ago. Now I'm a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan. You want to hear my favorite part?"

I was about to say no when he stood up and started singing again.

_When the enterprising burglar's not a burgling_ --

_When the cutthroat isn't occupied in crime. He_

_loves to hear the little brook a gurgling_

_And listen to the merry village chime._

_Ah, take one consideration with another_

_A policeman's lot is not a happy one_.

"Thanks, Fran." I cut him off. _His_ voice was good, but a little Savoy Opera goes a long way. A look of great affection crossed Magda's face when she smiled at him.

Were they lovers? Who _did_ my friend, this sexy divorced man, sleep with? He never talked about it.

There was so much I could have asked about Pauline, but thought it better to simply let the two Ostrova women talk about her.

"I was her mother, but still I never really knew her, you know? This is something I still cannot get over. She came from right here in my stomach, but

I did not know her because she changed and changed and changed and sometimes it was good and sometimes it was crazy. There was this old movie, _Man of a Thousand Faces_? This was Pavlina. A thousand faces. I don't know which girl she was when she died."

An hour later, Magda said, "My sister did her own thing and if you didn't like it, too bad. At the trial, it came out she had a lot of boyfriends. So? Big deal! A guy who has a lot of girls is a stud.

A woman does the same thing and she's a slut. Know what I say to that? Bullshit! Pauline wasn't a slut -- she was a individual and even I knew that when I was a kid.

As a sister? She was okay, but mostly all I remember is her going in and out of our house in a hurry because she was always up to something, you know? She always had something going on."

Jitka came into the room carrying a plate full of Czech pastries --

_buchty_ and _kolace_. "Pavlina was a bird. That's what I say. She flew around and never landed anywhere too long. Then poof! Off she flies again."

"Nah, Ma, you're all wrong." Magda picked up one of the sweets and took a bite. Powdered sugar dropped over her hand and fell like snow onto the floor. "Birds are always jumping up and flying away 'cause they're scared of everything. Nothing scared Pauline. If she was curious, she'd charge it like a rhino. She wasn't any _bird_."

They had given me permission to tape what they said. Not having to take notes enabled me to sit back and watch them interact. Sometimes they agreed, sometimes not. Once in a while they would compare notes about a shared Pauline experience. It gave me the feeling they had been
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going over these things for years. What _else_ did they possess of the dead girl? What other things could

they point to or remember and say _that's_ who she was, that's what she did.

Who else cared about their dead love? Worse, who else even remembered? I understood why they would cherish her notebooks.

I told them the story of the day Pauline ran over our dog and came to the house to report it.

They were delighted and asked many questions.

"She never told me she hit a dog!" Jitka said crossly, as if preparing to have a word about it with her eldest daughter when she came in. "When I was little girl in Prague, my mother got bottle of perfume for her birthday. She never wore it because she thought it is too nice to use. Typical mother, hah?

But _I_ would go into my parents' room all the time and smell it. If Mother caught me, ooh! She would get _so_ angry, but she could not stop me from doing it. I _had_ to breathe that smell at least twice a week. It said there were so many exotic and wonderful things in the world and one day _I_ would go and know them. Adventure! Romance! Gary Grant! I didn't need to read _Arabian

Nights_ books -- I just take the top out of her bottle and _pop_! -- there was the _dzin . ._ . the genie for me.

"But I grew up and married Milan and come to America. That was a little interesting, but my whole life wouldn't have filled up that bottle. I think, I really do think if Pavlina was alive, her life would have been everything I dreamed of when I smelled the perfume. She got into trouble and made me crazy, but she could have done anything."

"Who do you think killed her?" I asked in as calm a voice as I could muster.

Mother and daughter glanced at each other. Jitka nodded for Magda to speak.

"From everything we know? Gordon Cadmus. I mean, Frannie's been showing us all this stuff over the years, telling us things, and if I had to bet my life on it, I'd say it was him.

"It's getting cold in here! Hah, Ma? Isn't it cold in here?" Rubbing her shoulders, Magda stood up and left the room. No one said anything. Pauline's death was suddenly as fresh again as a just-dropped glass.

After asking if I could visit again, we thanked the Ostrovas and left.

On the way to the car, Frannie's pocket phone rang. He was needed down at the station. It was a five-minute walk from there so we said goodbye and he strode off.

Veronica was taking the train back to the city, but asked if I would show her Crane's View before she left. I'd done the tour first with Cass, then Frannie, and now Veronica. It had been different each time because it was always through another pair of eyes. Cass knew the town through my stories, Frannie because he had lived there his whole life, Veronica because of the death of Pauline. She made it plain she wasn't interested in Al Salvato's store or the spot where fifteen-year-old McCabe set a car on fire: She wanted to see Pauline's town.

We drove past the school, the pizza place, the movie theater. The tour ended down at the river/railroad station. I parked near the water and we walked to where we'd found the body. I described again what it had been like.

We stood there silently looking around. The sun was going down and its gold set the water on fire. Her train was due to arrive in a few minutes. This companionable silence would have been a nice way to end the visit, but then the big bats flew out of the Veronica cave.

The first one, a small and innocuous question, gave no hint of what was to come. "Whatever happened to Edward Durant's father?"

"I'm interviewing him next week. He's retired. Lives across the river in
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Tappan. Sounded nice on the phone."

"Sam, you shouldn't have asked the Ostrovas who they thought killed Pauline. I was surprised at you."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to have to tell them about the videotape and the notes you've gotten. All of it's going to upset them. It's taken thirty years to get over her death and now you come in and exhume her. I think the less you

upset them, the better. The less you tell them --"

"Don't _lecture_ me, Veronica. I don't agree with you. When we find the real killer it'll give them some peace. The only way I can do that is to ask a lot of questions of everyone."

"Do you think you can trust Frannie?" Her voice was calm enough, but the look on her face wasn't.

"Why shouldn't I?"

"I don't know. Just the way he is. He obviously has his own agenda and maybe it's not the same as yours. Anyway, you don't need his help on this, Sam. _I_ can do it with you. I'll do whatever you want. I'm great at interviewing and researching. That's my job! I make documentary films.

Forget

Frannie and that boy Ivan. I'll help you with everything. You can't imagine the connections I have!" She stepped in close. I could smell the hot tang of her breath. She put her cheek to mine and whispered, "You don't need anyone but me. I'm your _harbor_."

The tone of her voice and its absolute conviction gave me the creeps.

Thank God her train was due any moment. I reminded her of this and started toward the station.

She took my arm. I didn't want her to touch me.

Pauline Ostrova and Edward Durant Jr. were made for each other and never should have met.

He was practical and thorough, she was not. The first time he ever insulted her, he said she was as complicated and bustling as a beehive.

It became his nickname for her. She laughed in his face and said she'd rather be _that_ than a key or a pencil, like him, which served exactly one boring purpose and thus was constantly forgotten or lost.

Both kids were brilliant and moody. Durant had lived his life in the shadow of his important and powerful father. Pauline's dad was a mechanic.